Harvard University Press imprint: 1080 books

Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Poetry presents a selection of definitively edited texts that remind us why Emerson’s poetry matters and why he remains one of our most important theoreticians of verse. Drawn chiefly from the multivolume Collected Works, each poem is accompanied by a headnote for the student and general reader.

Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson have gathered Emerson’s most memorable prose published under his direct supervision, enhanced by additional writings. Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Prose is the only single-volume anthology that presents the full range of Emerson’s written and spoken prose—sermons, lectures, addresses, and essays.

In charting the growth of gleaming shopping centers and refurbished brownstones in Harlem, Brian Goldstein shows that gentrification was not imposed on an unwitting community by opportunistic developers or outsiders. It grew from the neighborhood’s grassroots, producing a legacy that benefited some longtime residents and threatened others.

When Jimi Hendrix died, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet ten years earlier, Chuck Berry had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become white? Jack Hamilton challenges the racial categories that distort standard histories of rock music and the 60s revolution.

Caitlin Rosenthal explores quantitative management practices on West Indian and Southern plantations, showing how planter-capitalists built sophisticated organizations and used complex accounting tools. By demonstrating that business innovation can be a byproduct of bondage Rosenthal further erodes the false boundary between capitalism and slavery.

The financial crisis of 2008 made Americans keenly aware of the impact Wall Street has on the economic well-being of the nation and its citizenry. Ott shows how the government, corporations, and financial institutions transformed stock investment from an elite to a mass practice at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Lincoln’s Hundred Days tells the story of the period between September 22, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he signed the significantly altered decree. As battlefield deaths mounted and debate raged, Lincoln hesitated, calculated, prayed, and reckoned with the anxieties and expectations of millions.

The Holy Roman Empire lasted a thousand years, far longer than ancient Rome. Its continuity rested on the ideal of a unified Christian civilization. As Peter Wilson shows, the Empire tells the story of Europe better than histories of individual nation-states, and its legacy can be seen today in debates over the nature of the European Union.

Is there a moment in history when a work receives its ideal interpretation? Or is perpetual negotiation required to preserve the past and accommodate the present? The freedom of interpretation, Charles Rosen suggests in these sparkling explorations, exists in a delicate balance with fidelity to the identity of the original work.

Russia had an extraordinary twentieth century, undergoing upheaval and transformation. Updating his acclaimed History of Modern Russia, Robert Service provides a panoramic perspective on a country whose Soviet past encompassed revolution, civil war, mass terror, and two world wars. He shows how seven...

Driving straight to the heart of the most contentious issue in American history, Sean Wilentz argues controversially that, far from concealing a crime against humanity, the U.S. Constitution limited slavery’s legitimacy—a limitation which in time inspired the antislavery politics that led to Southern secession, the Civil War, and Emancipation.

The youngest member of the Paris-based experimental collective Oulipo, Levin Becker tells the story of one of literature’s quirkiest movements—and the personal quest that led him to seek out like-minded writers, artists, and scientists who are obsessed with language and games, and who embrace formal constraints to achieve literature’s potential.

Roms (Gypsies) have lived among Europeans since the Middle Ages and yet still seem exotic to Westerners. Yaron Matras challenges stereotypes that have long been the unwelcome travel companions of this community, and offers a perspective-changing account of who the Roms are, how they live today, and how they have survived in Europe and America.

To continue doing business in Germany, Hollywood studios agreed not to make films attacking Nazis or condemning persecution of Jews. Ben Urwand reveals this collaboration and the cast of characters it drew in, ranging from Goebbels to Louis B. Mayer. At the center was Hitler himself--obsessed with movies and their power to shape public opinion.